Archive for the ‘disease’ Category

The Christian Science Church – a part of the Canberra community. Members share testimonies and talk about their lives as Christian Scientists.

This article, A Quick Recovery from Pneumonia, is by a member of the Christian Science Church in Canberra. It describes a quick healing of pneumonia-like symptoms.

Last year quite suddenly I began to feel ill. Within a day I was laboring to breathe and felt dangerously ill. Some years back I had similarly fallen ill and to comply with work regulations was assessed by a doctor. The diagnosis at this previous time was pneumonia so I was fairly certain that this time, although I did not consult a doctor, I was also presenting with pneumonia symptoms.

I was brought up in Christian Science and have witnessed many healings so I felt confident in relying on prayer again for this.

Rise in the strength of Spirit to resist all that is unlike good. God has made man capable of this, and nothing can vitiate the ability and power divinely bestowed on man.

So I held fast to this and the knowledge that I was made in ‘the image and likeness of God’ (Genesis 1: 26, 27) and this settled my thinking. By the next morning I was breathing easily but I still felt extremely unwell. At this point I thought it was wise to contact a friend and ask her to pray with me. This friend expressed such love and tenderness – I just felt enveloped in love. Within a couple of hours the temperature was gone and I was feeling well enough to get up. That night I ate dinner with the family and the next morning I was at my usual post as Superintendent of the Sunday School. This was the end of this condition.

For this, the previous healing of pneumonia, and many other healings through prayer and spiritualisation of thought I am very grateful. Christian Science is teaching me, as I meet such challenges, that we really do have dominion and that God is ‘a very present help in trouble’ (Psalm 46: 1).

To read more testimonies of healing shared by members of the Christian Science Church in Canberra click on the archive headings on the left for May and June 2016.

The Christian Science Church – a part of the Canberra community. Members share testimonies and talk about their lives as Christian Scientists.

This article, A Prayer and a Cat, is by Debbie who is a member of the Christian Science Church in Canberra. She describes how her prayers for the world also resulted in healing for a friend’s cat.

I would like to share a healing that happened some years ago but it’s one that has meant a lot to me.

At the time I was working as a teacher in a local primary school. There was one particular colleague that I sat with sometimes at lunch; she often talked to me about her cat, Hershey, who seemed to be a big part of her life. However, at this particular time much of her conversation was about her upcoming trip to the US – a holiday for which they had been saving for a long time.

One day I walked into the staff room to find this friend crying gently while she ate her sandwich. I sat with her and asked what had upset her. She said that Hershey was sick and the vet had said he would die any day. She was supposed to leave for the US in a few days and no cattery would take a cat that was about to die. The kindest thing to do, the vet said, was to put him to sleep before she left.

My friend couldn’t bring herself to put her beloved cat down and felt guilty that she was leaving him when he was so ill. Yet the holiday couldn’t be cancelled at this late date.

Without thinking too much I said: “Would you like me to mind Hershey?” Immediately she jumped at this idea and within the minute it was settled. She said she understood that he would not be alive when she returned but that at least he could go in his own time and in comfort. I agreed.

Two days later Hershey was delivered to my place. I admit I was not prepared for the sight of him. He lay motionless in his basket; he was skin and bones with dull tufty fur and sore spots; his eyes remained closed. I was informed that he needed his own quiet, dark room with no interruptions except for his medication. I had not considered the issue of medication. He had so many! She explained that Hershey had an immune deficiency condition – a cat’s version of AIDS she said. We installed Hershey in his room and she said her good-byes.

For two days I tried to give Hershey his medication but it seemed to cause him so much stress. I couldn’t see the point so I stopped. I had been brought up in Christian Science and had always solved problems quickly through prayer. Prayer for me was not a passive asking God for help but an active change of base in my thinking and spiritual reasoning.

There had been a lot of news coverage at this time around the issue of AIDS and I had been praying about this. In my reasoning I went back to my basic beliefs: I believed that there was a controlling order or principle to the universe and that principle was Love – another name for God. A God of love I reasoned could not make a dangerous universe; that a God of Love protected creation, it didn’t expose it to harm. I had proved many times that holding to spiritual truths, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, resolved inharmonious situations.

Now I applied this reasoning to Hershey. He was part of Love’s creation and I knew this Love was a powerful force for good. In the textbook of Christian Science, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy writes: You embrace your body in your thought, and you should delineate upon it thoughts of health, not of sickness (p208) so I embraced Hershey in my thought in this way. I didn’t dwell on him, but I held to this idea every time I did think of him. I felt safe that he was safe.

Very quickly he began to respond. In a day or so he was up and walking about his room; another day or two he was out and exploring the house.

At the end of two weeks my friend returned and phoned to see how things had gone with Hershey. She was very surprised to hear that he was ready to be picked up. When she arrived to collect him he was sitting on the back of the lounge in the sun looking out the window. He was plump and healthy, his fur was flawless and sleek and shiny, and he had a playful sparkle in his eyes. He was very glad to be going home.

Sometimes when I pray for the world I am tempted to wonder: Are my prayers doing any good? This experience with Hershey gave me further proof that spiritual truths are powerful, more powerful than material evidence, and that prayers are effective in bringing about harmony in any situation – even those given up as hopeless. I continue to be grateful for all that I am learning in my on-going study of Christian Science.

The Christian Science Church – a part of the Canberra community. Members share testimonies and talk about their lives as Christian Scientists.

This article, Healing Like an Awakening, is by Christine who is a member of the Christian Science Church in Canberra. She shares how a deeper understanding of God as Principle helped to bring about the healing of a restricting physical condition.

Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science has an interesting definition of this Science: “To live so as to keep human consciousness in constant relation with the divine, the spiritual, and the eternal, is to individualize infinite power; and this is Christian Science.”

My study and practice of this Science of Being has resulted in a deep sense of peace, joy and gratitude. I am learning how thought is vital to my everyday experience and keeping my consciousness in relation to the divine, is the key to an awareness of what is real.

Many times I experienced that what was first so real, so frightening, so painful was changed totally by a change of perception, a change of thought, the realization that we are not alien to the divine Principle, or law, but are truly one with the divine Life.

I would like to explain this further with a physical healing that happened some years ago. I grew up with the practice of Christian Science Mind-healing and so it was very natural for me to turn to it in every need. So when I became ill with symptoms that were never diagnosed (listlessness, sleeplessness and no appetite) I turned to God for a greater sense of wholeness and perfection. I worked with a Christian Science healer but my condition did not change until I became quite frail.

My husband gave me an ultimatum one day and asked me to see a medical practitioner. I could see that this was a reasonable request but it also somehow awakened me to expect healing and a change in my thought that I had been working on every day – a kind of transformation. That night when I could not sleep, I got up and walked around our kitchen and thought of 7 synonyms or names for God that Mary Baker Eddy explains in her book Science & Health. These are: Mind, Soul, Spirit, Principle, Life, Truth, Love.

I often ponder them when I want to get a clearer idea of what God means to me and I did this aloud at this time of great need. For example, I thought of how my life was an expression of the one big Life, Life that could never get limited, disharmonious. There is Truth that always frees us from limitations and how Love is the one cause of all being. When I came to the concept of a divine Principle, or law, something suddenly cleared in my thinking. I realized that I was connected to the law of Life, the law of being – everyone was. I bathed in that thought and it became like a light and also something of substance I could lean on, something that had indeed great power.

During this prayerful time I became very calm and eventually I returned to bed and for the first time in weeks, slept peacefully. In the morning I was well, ate a big breakfast and although I had been quite weak, there was no need for recuperation. I quickly gained my normal weight and started living an energetic life once more. In fact just two days after the night time turn around, I saddled my horse and went for a long ride through the countryside with such a sense of unbounded freedom. The healing suddenly felt so natural, as if all that had happened was that I had woken up and realized that all was well.

On Thursday 19 November a Thanksgiving Service was held by the members of the Christian Science Church in Canberra. Many in the congregation gave thanks for the good in their lives:

Very recently I was listening to a Christian Science lecture in which the speaker outlined a wonderful example of problem solving through prayer, and then went on to share her awe at the overwhelming abundance of the divine solution.

This brought vividly to my mind the first time I experienced this divine ‘extra’ in an answer to my prayer. I was staying alone in an absent friend’s home when over several days I found myself feeling sicker and sicker and weaker and worrying about how I was to get home.

Finally, I looked in a Christian Science Journal for the name and number of a local Christian Science practitioner to help me through prayer. She so readily and lovingly took me under her spiritual wing. I don’t remember now whether the healing took 2 or 3 days but completely healed I certainly was, for which I felt much gratitude, but not surprise, because new as I was to Christian Science, I’d already learned enough to know God’s readiness and love and power were always there. The dazzling remembrance that sprang to my mind when His abundant good was illustrated in the lecture was my trip home a day later. When I presented myself at the airport the clerk said – completely out of the blue – that my seat had been up graded to first class!

Every Wednesday at 6.00 pm a Testimony Meeting is held at the Christian Science Church in Canberra. Each meeting begins with readings selected from the two books designated as the Pastor of Christian Science: The Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scripturesby Mary Baker Eddy. A new topic for the readings is selected each week.

At the conclusion of the short readings the congregation is invited to share thoughts on this topic and relate how they have used the principles of Christian Science to solve life’s problems and bring physical healing.

If you are in Canberra on any Wednesday please join us. Everyone is welcome.